artists; including Picasso.
             If there is one painting that is possibly one of the most influential images regarding cubism in the twenty first century it is George Braque’s “Houses at L’Estaque.” During the summer of 1908 in southern France, Braque painted a series of radically innovative canvases, of which the most celebrated is “Houses at L’Estaque”; in this painting we can see the slab volumes, sober coloring, and warped perspective typical of the first part of what has been called the analytical phase of Cubism. This painting was shown in a show at Kahnweiler's gallery. It provoked from the Paris critic Louis Vauxcelles a remark about "cubes" that soon blossomed into a stylistic label. This painting was the painting that gave cubism its name. Vauxcelles’s remarked about the canvas being full of small cubes, and this comment was the spark that constituted the name of the movement. Braque undertook Vauxcelles criticisms, much like other movements of the past, and used it for the name of the movement. ( Flam, 144)
             In “Houses at L'Estaque” all the sensuous elements of Braque's previous years were banished. Color has been reduced to a severe combination of browns, dull greens and grays. The curving rhythms have given way to a system of vertical and horizontal, broken only by the forty-five degree diagonals of roof-tops and trees. All details have been eliminated and the foliage of the trees reduced to a minimum to reveal the geometric severity of the houses. These are continued upwards almost to the top of the canvas so that the eye is allowed no escape beyond them. The picture plane is further emphasized by the complete lack of aerial perspective (the far houses are, if anything, darker and stronger in value than the foreground house), and by the fact that
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